BC Books From the Mainland/Southwest

A penetrating and unflinching examination of the modern Canadian male, Monument is told through the eyes of Seth Wilhelm, a talented young hockey player whose career is cut short by injury, sending him spiralling out of control. A failed stint at college sets the stage for a second fall from grace, a car accident which claims the life of his new girlfriend, leaving Wilhelm himself to blame. Using his undisclosed innocence as the impetus to piece his life back together and move on with his once p …

When jazz musicians of the ’30s and ’40s were gettin’ down, when things were really cookin’ they’d say, Yeah, make it tight like that. It meant things were good, as good as they could get. It’s a good thing in fiction, too. The stories in Jim Christy’s latest collection span time and space, taking us from the depression-era Deep South to the modern-day Vancouver commute. Private eyes. Old drunks. Yuppies, hippies, and everyone in between gets the trademark Christy work-over. He rou …

Toy Gun continues the exploration of character and fate on the streets of Vancouver that began with the novel Stupid Crimes (1992) and continued in Krekshuns (1995). Written in the style of the “hard-boiled” detective thriller, Toy Gun is very much a literary treatment of contemporary life in one of the world’s most densely populated urban centres. The novel focusses more closely on the stormy life of the protagonist, parole officer Barry Delta-his loves and losses, his misfortunes, foolis …

Finalist, City of Vancouver Book Prize

A blackly comic new novel from Vancouver author Grant Buday, based on his eight glorious years working in a mass production bakery. Dickensian in magnitude, White Lung is a sardonic portrait of B.C.'s racial conflicts and chaotic economy.

Praise for White Lung:

"a rollicking black comedy of errors with a host of unforgettable characters" (Quill & Quire, starred review)

"rarely has there been a novel as astute about life on the punch clock" (The Globe and Mail)

" …

Ten Women is a new collection of short fiction from one of Canada's preeminent writers. Each of these stories offers us a portrait of a woman with whom the author may or may not have had either an intimate and/or a meaningful relationship. You can't really tell for sure. Depending on your proclivities, some of them might even seem pretty hot - like the lurid fantasies that illustrate the covers of pulp fiction novels, the ethereal intellectual beauties that emanate from poetic fields of asphodel …

Finalist for the City of Vancouver Book Award

The Revolving City: 51 Poems and the Stories Behind Them is a vibrant and diverse collection from a who's who of the west coast poetry scene.

The poems assembled here range from the lyric to the experimental and address the theme of disconnection in an urban environment from a variety of positions, concerns, and cultural perspectives. The collection also includes short reflections on the poems, written by the poets themselves, providing readers with an …

Finalist, Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize (BC Book Prizes), 2016

Foreign Park situates itself in an epoch where prior assurances of the natural world's solidity begin to slip. Poisons enter the Fraser River Basin. An oil slick approaches by night engulfing a fishing vessel, leaving its captain in open waters. Page after page, Foreign Park makes strange with its inhabitants. As it unfolds, it plots itself along the Fraser River overlaying myth and historicity with present day. These calm poems detail …

Kevin Spenst's much-anticipated debut collection of poetry opens as a coming-of-age narrative of lower-middle class life in Vancouver's suburb of Surrey, embroidered within a myriad of pop- and "post-Mennonite" culture.

Language is at play with sit-com sonnets, soundscapes of noise, videogame goombas, an Old-Testament God, teenage longing within the power chords of heavy metal, and the complicated loss of a father to schizophrenia. Jabbering with Bing Bong chronicles the heartbreaking and slapsti …